Playing Catch Up

I always have great intentions about trying to blog about every week or two, but I never seem to find the time, so today I'm taking the time to do a little catching up.  

We learned a lot about winter weather in January even though our temps were more spring like! 

These were our snowman snacks:

The boys are digging in play-dough searching for marbles.  This was harder for them than I though it was going to be.  Super great for their fine motor skills!!

Snowman Pancakes!  Chocolate chips for the face, raisins for the buttons and bacon for the arms!  When we added powdered sugar it looked like snow!

 The boys have been having so much fun using marbles.  I saw this idea to make magnetic marble runs and knew my two kiddos would love it!  Right now we're using the refrigerator to attach them to, but I plan to buy a large oil drip pan to use in the future (which will be great for other magnetic activities, too!).  It was fun to see the boys move the tubes around and make them work.  A lot of problem solving going on here!

Teachable Moments: Kindness

After we went bowling Saturday night we ventured over to the arcade area.  We weren't going to spend any money on games, but we just letting the boys run around and pretend.  Elliott was fortunate enough when he pushed a button on the Skee Ball game that it came on - someone before us had left money!  It was a little funny because Elliott and Oliver didn't know how to play - Elliott thought it was like baseball and threw the ball at the cage!! Haha! 

The boys ended up winning 2 tickets (1 for each) so we went to the counter to see if he could "buy" anything with only 2.  

There wasn't anything we could get for only 2 tickets.  I let Elliott and Oliver know some options: 1) Some kids take home the tickets to play with and 2) some kids are really kind and give them away to someone else so that person can use them to get a toy.  Elliott thought about it for just a second and said he wanted to give it away! SCORE! He picked a boy about his age and handed it to him, Oliver followed him and did the same thing with his ticket.  The look on the other boy's face was priceless, we could tell he was surprised and thrilled! 

We've been really focusing on kindness this past week and this was a prime example of the boys finding a way to be kind.  As we were leaving the bowling alley we talked about how that was really kind of them and we discussed how happy it made the other boy feel!  

A couple of days before this act of kindness I found this Kindness Jar here.  We made one for our house and we've been writing down instances when someone does something kind.  As soon as we got home from the bowling alley the boys wanted to write down their act of kindness. I could tell that they (mostly E) felt so proud of showing kindness to someone else, especially a stranger, and I think it made a big impact on both of the boys.  

I just love teachable moments!  The boys made me a proud momma that night!